Friday, August 2, 2013

Friday Nasihah

"... He endows you with hearing, sight and insights: (yet) how seldom are you grateful."

The Quran recognizes that an
empirical attitude is an indispensable stage in the spiritual life of
humanity and thus it gives equal importance to all the facets of human
experience as yielding knowledge of the Ultimate Reality which reveals
its symbols both within and without. According to the Quran, to secure a
complete vision of Reality, sensory perception must be supplemented by the perception of Fuad or the heart as
revealed in the above verse. The heart provides inner intuition or
inner experience that brings us into contact with aspects of Reality
other than those open to the senses. Mystically information is
disseminated to the mind. It is a mode of dealing with Reality in which
sensation, in the physiological sense of the word, does not play any
part.

The region of inner
experience, for the purpose of knowledge, is as real as any other region
of human experience and cannot be traced back to sensory perception.
The immediacy of inner experience resembles our normal experience and
belongs to the same category. Unfortunately, living the present world of
naked materialism, we have assumed, without criticism, that knowledge
of the external world through sensory perception is knowledge.

Understanding the Prophet's LifeReciting Quran
The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: "One who
recites the Quran in a loud voice is like one who gives alms openly
and one who recites the Quran quietly is one who gives alms secretly."[Abu Dawud]
Narrated Abdullah Ibn Abbas, "The Prophet's recitation was loud enough for one who was in the inner chamber to hear it when he was in the house." [Abu Dawud]
The Prophet, peace be upon him, once went out at night and
found Abu Bakr praying in a low voice, and he passed Umar ibn
al-Khattab who was raising his voice while praying. When they both met
the Prophet together, the Prophet said: I passed by you, Abu Bakr,
when you were praying in a low voice. He replied: I made Him hear with
Whom I was holding intimate converse, Apostle of Allah. He (the
Prophet) said to Umar: I passed by you when you were praying in a loud
voice. He replied: Apostle of Allah, I was awakening the drowsy and
driving away the Devil. The Prophet said: Raise your voice a little,
Abu Bakr, and he said to Umar: Lower your voice a little. [Abu Dawud]Compiled From:"Prayer At Night" - Sunan Abu Dawud

Blindspot!Repentance

Even if one tries his best to
follow all of the steps and means that help one purify his soul, the
nature of man is such that, in general, he is bound to falter every now
and then. When a person falters and sins, though, that is not the end of
the matter. As long as he has not reached the moment of death, the door
to repentance will remain open to him. He need not despair - as long as
he brings himself to account and repents to Allah for the sins and
transgressions he has committed.

The true repentance includes:

1. Stopping oneself from the sin that one is committing
2. Feeling remorse
3. Having the sincere intention to never again return to performing that sin
4. If the sin also involved the rights of other humans, one must also rectify the wrong that he has done

Ibn Taymiyyah points out that
repentance is not just from the performance of evil deeds but also from
the lack of performing the good deeds.